Elective Carnage

Loss

Nine Eleven

7 Deadly Sins

Christmas 2003

FIVE GORGEOUS LOSSES
and
FIVE HEALING LOSSES

Not all loss is catastrophic.
Some can leave the old euphoric.
How releasing it would be,
and pleasing too, for instance,
to lose without resistence,
not only all your teeth, your hair,
your nimble gait,
but what is lost by happy wisdom,
not the tragedies of fate.

I. THE LOSS OF A LITTLE STUPIDITY

Waking up from dreams
insane with truth
that wing away like bats
wearing political masks,

you can tell you are alive,
right now, right now in the morning sun,
by the absence of the phantoms
of stupidities of power

all undone, idiotic-seeming
as losing your keys
then feeling free with finding them
right where you put them